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Regrets

Was there anyone in the city last week who wasn’t having second thoughts of some kind? The unlucky 69 folks who spent nearly twelve hours dangling above the East River when the tramway halted mid-trip must have rued their decision to visit Roosevelt Island even more thoroughly than every other visitor. Coach Larry Brown of the Knicks, whose historically bad season stalled long before the halfway point, spent most of the week at home, convalescing from severe heartburn and quite likely wishing he’d stayed in Detroit. Superfan Spike Lee (whose hit Inside Man has almost obliterated a decade of regrettable creative choices) seemed to be doing some rethinking of his own. “This is the worst,” he said. “When the Knicks asked me to do their TV campaign, I was very enthusiastic. I’m as shocked as everybody else.” The besieged Transport Workers Union wanted a do-over, overwhelmingly approving the same contract it rejected in January (which the Transportation Authority had then taken off the table). There were other causes for regret: the Harlem woman arrested for killing a man who called her a “cornball,” the two Duke lacrosse players (both products of tony NYC burbs) who were arrested on rape charges, and thousands of New Yorkers who got a little bit too creative with their taxes only to be confronted with an IRS promise to more than double its audits this year. New daddy Tom Cruise may have wished he still had his PR Cerberus, Pat Kingsley, to keep the media in line when a creepy joke he’d made about eating his baby’s placenta resurfaced. But in Washington, at least, no one—save outgoing press secretary Scott McClellan—was looking backward with mixed feelings. The CIA tried to reclassify 50-year-old documents; the FBI angled to get a look at the papers of seventies muckraker Jack Anderson. And President Bush, the man who once said he wouldn’t have done anything different in his first term, stood firm behind an embattled playmate with words that would make any 7-year-old proud: “I’m the decider, and I decide what’s best,” he said. “And what’s best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as secretary of Defense.”